I speak, of course, of “Please Mr. Kennedy,” the musical high point of Inside Llewyn Davisand a musical high point in cinema in 2013. While the movie’s soundtrack was produced by T Bone Burnett and features a number of folk standards, it’s “Please Mr. Kennedy” that first got the audience bursting into spontaneous applause at Cannes. It’s “Please Mr. Kennedy” that inspired its own oral history. It’s “Please Mr. Kennedy” that has been covered by no less than Elvis Costello. And it’s “Please Mr. Kennedy” that features Adam Driver saying things like “Outer,” “Space,” and “Shoo-oot."

And yet, the Oscaraugurs tell us, “Please Mr. Kennedy” won’t merit a nomination for Best Original Song this year. The reason for this is simple and wholly misguided: As the Los Angeles Times tells it, “Please Mr. Kennedy” is not sufficiently original. In addition to Burnett, the Coen brothers, and Justin Timberlake, the song is credited to George Cromarty and Ed Rush, who released a slightly different song of the same name as the Goldcoast Singers in 1962.

But, as Inside Llewyn Davis subtly suggests, to disqualify a work of brilliance like “Please Mr. Kennedy” because it is not wholly original is to misunderstand how genius actually works. This is why (musical spoiler alert) the Coen brothers have Bob Dylan play as his only song in the film “Farewell,” a ballad that bears a resemblance to “Dink’s Song (Fare Thee Well),” the traditional folk song that Davis plays at multiple points throughout the film (and which Dylan was also known to cover). The point of this choice is that there could never have been a Bob Dylan if he hadn’t stolen from the Greenwich Village folk scene.

And Woods’ “Please Mr. Kennedy” had its own apparent inspiration: Larry Verne’s “(Please) Mr. Custer,” a No. 1 hit in 1960. As with its apparent descendants from the Goldcoast Singers and Mickey Woods, the song features roughly the same melody and is about a man trying to avoid a war (in this case, it’s Little Big Horn). What Llewyn Davis says is right: “If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song.”

“Please Mr. Kennedy” is a perfect example of how these adaptations can be transformative, and of how these adaptations, too, can demonstrate a form of genius. Building upon this preexisting material, Burnett and co. had to be write something that was both (a) terrible, from Llewyn Davis’ perspective, and (b) catchy enough to be believable as a major hit. This was no small order, and that they managed to do it while also crafting the movie’s funniest moment is a testament to the collective brilliance of the men that worked on the song.

The Coens, Burnett, Timberlake, and Oscar Isaac put in hours and hours overhauling the song entirely: In addition to adding the countdown at the beginning and Driver’s ad libs, Burnett himself wrote “10 or 15 verses.” The Coens then “edited and refined and changed” these verses. Together they kicked around and recorded multiple versions over the course of weeks, before the performers finally shaped the final version under Burnett and the Coens’ direction. It was a perfect example of the kind of “creative interaction between the filmmaker(s) and the composer(s)” that the Academy explicitly values.